The present invention relates to the field of embroidery and monogramming and more specifically to a hoop that incorporates magnets to hold and secure a garment, piece of material, or other item to be embroidered.
In the embroidery industry “hoop” or “hoops” are referred to by many different terms, like frame, clamp, hooping device, fabric holding device, fabric retaining device and fabric mounting frame. The definition of each of these terms is intended to apply to all of these terms to give these terms their broadest meaning individually and collectively as they are used interchangeably herein. In an instance where the term or terms have more than one meaning, all meanings will apply.
Various types of hoops and frames for holding an item to be embroidered are commonplace for both home embroidery and commercial embroidery machines. Generally, embroidery hoops comprise upper and lower hoops or clamping members that mate with one another. Clothing is placed between the clamping members, usually with a backing material also placed between the lower member and the item to be embroidered. These types of hoops tightly pinch the material between the vertical sides of the upper and lower hoops. Because of this, the lower hoop member needs to be adjusted for any change in thickness of the item to be hooped, which may not always result in the material being sufficiently taut or tight, potentially resulting in an improperly embroidered piece of material.
The use of standard embroidery hoops becomes more difficult when the item to be embroidered is a heavier or thicker material, such as a winter jacket, work overalls, Carhartt® type jackets, or items made of leather. Properly embroidering such items can be very difficult and time consuming. It is very difficult to figure out what adjustment should be made to the lower hoop or clamping member to securely hold the garment, while not having too tight of an arrangement that the two clamping members cannot properly mate with one another. It often takes multiple tries to get the adjustment correct. Some fabrics, like that of Carhartt® type jackets, are not made to be stretched or formed in a manner needed to allow standard hoops to be applied to the fabric, which requires application of a great deal of pressure to try to make the fabric conform to the shape of the hoop.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,336,416 illustrates a clamp style prior art type of hoop or frame that was designed to overcome some of these obstacles. This type of frame does not need to pinch the fabric between vertical edges on its body, so this frame can hold various thicknesses of fabric much easier. It pinches the material between the faces of its upper clamping member and lower clamping member. These clamping members are spring loaded to allow for different thickness of material to be held without adjustment, but they do have limitations. One of the main limitations of the prior art is how far from an edge of a garment that it can hold a portion of fabric to be embroidered. This is because the device requires a pivot point to properly operate. The arrangement makes placing a logo in the middle of the back of a jacket, or on the left or right chest of a garment very difficult. If the distance to the logo location is larger than the distance from the clamping members to the pivot point, the material will need to be gathered in the pivot point to reach the embroidery location, which is usually impossible or impractical for these types of hooping machines.
Other problems arise when using computerized embroidery machines, since the position and orientation of the embroidery on the item is a function of how the item is captured within the hoop. Items to be embroidered are usually placed directly within the clamps while they are mounted on the embroidery machine, as it is difficult and time consuming to remove and reinstall the clamps onto the machine. This creates extra downtime for the machine, since it is not possible to have the next set of items hooped and ready to load onto the embroidery machine. The finished items have to be removed from the clamps and the next items have to be placed in the clamps, while the machine is waiting. The added downtime becomes more evident on machines with multiple heads. Mounting the fabric in the clamps while they are attached to the machine also makes aligning the exact portion of the garment to be embroidered very difficult. Even if the clamp were removed from the machine, there are no commercially available hooping devices or jigs to help align the clamp with a particular portion of a garment. Because of the need for a pivot point and at least one spring for biasing the base plate and upper clamping member in closed contact, the maximum sewing area of the embroidery machine is further limited by this prior art space requirement.
Prior art clamps are typically made out of steel to make them rigid enough to perform their intended operation. Such rigid material, and the extra mechanism needed for the pivot point and spring bias, makes the clamps heavier than standard hoops, with the added weight applying unnecessary stress to the mechanical and electrical components of the embroidery machine. The physical size of the clamp can also cause damage to some embroidery machines if the entire body of the clamp cannot fit under the needle bars used for embroidery. Operators need to be careful not to move the machine to a position that the body of the clamp can contact the needle bars.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,240,863 and 6,394,012 illustrate an alternative hoop or frame, created to address the limitations of standard upper and lower hoop members. These frames are designed to hold a special type of sticky backing material. The garment is then placed over and adhered to the sticky material to hold it in place while the embroidery operation is performed. This type of frame is very good for getting into small areas like pockets on garments, or for sewing on delicate fabrics, but is not really designed for everyday normal hooping of garments; it is more for specialty items. One disadvantage to these frames is the need for special sticky backing, which is generally more expensive than standard backing and can leave a residue on the needles of the embroidery machine over time. The residue can cause increased thread breaks and other problems. Also, the backing material has a limited number of uses before it needs to be removed from the frame and a new piece applied, which can increase the production time needed to complete a job. The sticky backing is not strong enough to adequately hold heavy items like Carhartt® type jackets during the embroidery process. The extra expense and increase in production time that is created by the use of sticky backing makes the sticky backing type of frame impractical for most normal placements of designs on shirts and jackets.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,138,960 discloses a magnetic monogramming frame. This frame is designed to be mounted to the pantograph of an embroidery machine from its lower member. The pantograph of the machine is the part that holds and moves the embroidery hoop under the stationary needle to create the design. Mounting a hoop directly to the pantograph requires that you physically fasten the hoop to the pantograph or that you fasten a separate adapter directly to the pantograph. Newer style machines use a set of arms that extend out from the pantograph and have adaptors on the ends of the arms that allow for quicker and easier mounting of hoops. The hoop from this prior art device is not designed to be releasably mounted to the existing hoop holding arms on these newer style commercial embroidery machines. This outdated design increases the time it takes to switch from using one type of frame to another. This prior art frame also incorporates continuous magnetic tape type material instead of separately mounted magnets. This type of magnetic material arrangement does not provide any automatic alignment between the upper and lower members of the frame. The frame of this prior art device pinches the material directly between the magnetic materials; it also does not provide a ridge to help hold the material to be embroidered taut and against the needle plate of the embroidery machine. If the material to be embroidered is not held taught and against the needle plate, this causes bouncing of the material during the embroidery process. This bouncing can cause looping of the embroidery thread and an undesirably look of the finished embroidery.
It is also desirous to improve and simplify the hooping process, in general. Hoops used in the commercial market must be suitable for repetitive, quick and accurate processes. That is, the devices must be set-up quickly for each successive embroidered piece of material, which requires that the hoop will sufficiently hold the fabric solidly in place, in a manner that can be accomplished quickly and efficiently. When embroidering, there is generally a backing piece of fabric located below the piece of clothing to be embroidered. Both the backing material and the item to be embroidered should be sufficiently held in place and not be allowed to move during the embroidery process, once properly aligned.
Present hoops leave room for improvement, as noted above. It would be desirable to have a hoop that would not have to be adjusted for different thicknesses of materials and placement of designs would not be limited by the mounting brackets of the hoop, and would not require a great amount of force to apply it to thick materials. It would also be desirable to be able to hold a large area of material to be embroidered without the embroidery hoop or clamping members limiting the potential sewing area of the embroidery machine, or adding an excessive amount of weight that the machine will have to move during the embroidery process. Another improvement would be to have a hoop that was easy to quickly align and apply to different types of garments.